Judge William Pryor rules for the defense

Judge Pryor, like Justice Gorsuch, has been channeling his inner-Scalia -- willing to rule for criminal defendants.  The latest is U.S. v. Harding (joined by Jordan and Brasher), which starts this way:

This appeal requires us to decide whether the district court abused its discretion by admitting evidence of drug trafficking as intrinsic evidence of a charged conspiracy that allegedly ended years earlier in a different federal district. A grand jury in the Southern District of Alabama charged James Harding with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute heroin and possession with intent to distribute heroin. At trial, the United States introduced evidence that agents, in a separate investigation, found multiple firearms and almost two kilograms of heroin at Harding’s home in the Northern District of Alabama over two years after the alleged end of the charged conspiracy. The United States offered no evidence linking the seized evidence to other members of the charged conspiracy. The district court admitted the evidence as intrinsic evidence and ruled, in the alternative, that the evidence was admissible as extrinsic evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b). But the district court rejected Harding’s several requests for a limiting instruction. The jury found Harding guilty of both charges. Because the district court abused its discretion by admitting the evidence as intrinsic and because its alternative ruling that the evidence was admissible under Rule 404(b) cannot be affirmed in the absence of a limiting instruction, we vacate Harding’s convictions and sentence and remand for a new trial. 

Bravo.  We need more judges who don't just knee-jerk for the government in every case.